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A University of Minnesota professor hopes to reel in invasive species in the state by implanting fish with electronic tags. Fisheries and wildlife professor Peter Sorensen is tracking the movement of carp in the Rice Creek Watershed District in Blaine, Minn. His research is part of a project funded by the National Science Foundation that aims to reduce the carp population by tracking their movements. Monitoring carp movement will help researchers to control the species’ population, said Nate Banet, fisheries and aquatic biology graduate student and research assistant.

“Nate is tracking common carp with radio tags to monitor how far they might move, when they might move and what their patterns of movement are so that eventually, we can understand them better and develop some control methods for them,” Sorensen said.

Though scientists have struggled with managing common carp in the past, Banet said he thinks he’s found a couple different strategies that could prove successful, including trapping and catching them in narrow areas of the lake.In his research, Banet discovered a majority of adult carp they tagged migrated upstream to a small creek about 15 feet wide every spring. “That’s a prime example of a chokepoint of where these fish are migrating,” he said.

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